


One Way Out

by Pigeon_theoneandonly



Series: Nathaly Shepard [2]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Being Hunted, Broken Bones, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Pre-Canon, Whump, burning building, fight for survival, graphic depictions of injury, how nathaly shepard broke her leg, pre-me1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:22:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22979818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeon_theoneandonly/pseuds/Pigeon_theoneandonly
Summary: Before she was Commander Shepard, Nathaly was a spec ops marine stationed in the Skyllian Verge.  On a routine check-in of a colony that's fallen silent, she finds herself in a fight for her life.  Alone, seriously injured, and without resources, she must find a way to outwit her opponent and survive.
Series: Nathaly Shepard [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1255094
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	One Way Out

The floor disintegrated, and Nathaly Shepard fell three stories through flame and smoke until she hit the basement boots-first with a sickening crack. Debris pelted her like hail, boards, carpet, nails, bubbled plastic bulkheads, all of it shedding down through the hole her body made to bury her. She lay still as a corpse.

Later she’d remember the heat licking at her face. But right then, for that first endless second, there was nothing. Not the sound of fire raging through the cheap insulation, not that familiar gray film of her brain soft-rebooting. Not even pain. Just a long moment of empty shock.

But when the pain came, it found her mouth before her conscious mind. A shallow, gasping groan welled up in her throat. Her leg was on fire. _Her leg was on fire._

Her teeth clamped on her lip, hard, as the moan grew into a scream. She followed her quarry into this hab, and Quantana was still here. The only survivor of a massacre and a turian to boot. She’d be delighted to find her like this and finish her off.

Even the assurance of certain death couldn’t stop the tide of agony rising through her. Her stomach twisted and roiled. She never got sick, not from something as fricking stupid as an injury, but even as the indignation formed, she twisted and vomited.

 _Think_ , she demanded, between one wave and the next. Staggering, how much this hurt. Shepard shut her eyes and did her best to steady her breathing, sweat trickling down her face from more than the burning building. Her hardsuit could not burn. That was indisputable. Her leg could not be on fire.

She risked a glance. Her right thigh bulged out at the side. 

Shepard schooled herself and stretched out her hand, but her courage failed her. It just hurt so damn much. “Fuck.”

But she was damned if it ended here, in some dead colonist’s dirt cellar. She forced herself to move before she could think about it. Her palm touched the bulge, and her stomach inverted itself. “Fuck, fuck—”

Her fingers felt around the wound against every ounce of instinct she had, while her vision flashed white, until she found the edge of the bone flush against the elastomere material. Definitely through her skin, not quite tough enough to breach her hardsuit. “Oh, fuck.”

A piece of flaming refuse crashed down not a meter from her head. She cringed into a ball, hands over her hair, but nothing more came. She had to get out of here before the hab collapsed. And hope like hell Quantana wasn’t waiting for her. 

“Okay,” she muttered, trying to pull herself together, apropos of nothing, flat on her stomach and surrounded by ashen air. A small breeze tugged the smoke towards the corner. Maybe towards fresh air. “Okay.”

On her elbows, in blinding pain, Shepard grit her teeth and started dragging her body along the floor. The broken leg was useless. But she couldn’t even move her good leg without pulling at their shared muscle, and that was beyond bearing. Centimeter by centimeter, she fought for her life. 

They just had to put the colony in a temperate forest. Which meant plenty of wood to illegally retrofit their habs, producing the flammable monstrosity entrapping her. Sure as shit, when she got home she was going to report this to Colonial Affairs.

Eventually she came to a short flight of stairs. Hopelessly tall. But it was better than a window out of reach, or a hole where the building had collapsed. The staircase was steel and hot to the touch. Her suit should protect her long enough to clear. Probably.

One way to find out. She hooked her fingers into the corrugation, and pulled. 

Halfway up, the spar of broken bone snagged on a riser, and for a half second, the world disappeared in a flash of agony. It was the first moment since she fell through the floor that she felt, fully, just how precarious her situation truly was. As she lay there panting, recovering her strength, knowing she could not spare this moment to do so, she considered that she’d come to this planet alone, the nearest Alliance patrol was at least a day out, and Quantana could not afford to leave a witness. Hence the house fire. Hence her current terrible odds.

Danger was a familiar companion, but Shepard was not accustomed to contemplating her own death. Usually she was too preoccupied to waste the RAM.

She blew out a breath. Up the stairs and out the door. Quantana could wait. Would wait, she was sure.

Her hand flailed for the touch pad. The heat beat at her, a relentless threat intent on having her die in this basement. Fingers stretched out, shy of her target, and slipped down the panel. She could have cried. Instead, she reached up and tried again.

The hatch zipped up. She pulled herself by the elbows into the cold clean air, a musty damp of tilled earth strong in her nostrils as she crawled through the vegetable patch and collapsed just past the safety of the tree line.

It could’ve been minutes or days later. The pain brought her back, eyes fluttering at the nagging insistence of her broken femur. Something liquid on her chin; on inspection, her gloved fingers came away sticky with old blood, where she’d scraped the skin raw and not even noticed. 

“Perfect,” she muttered. Smoke still lingered on the air, ash drifting through the trees. Probably not days, then. Shepard had endured a great deal in the way of injuries over the years, but losing time like that was new, and it was enough to give her pause even without being alone in a dead colony, hunted by an enemy.

Her pistol lay somewhere back in that burning hab. She checked her assault rifle, and snorted. Plastic piece of trash. Cooling chamber cracked, broken when she fell back on it after crashing through the floor. That left her sniper rifle. She had some of the best marksmanship scores in Rio, but that was only the smallest part of the sniper role, and she wasn’t trained for that.

That earned her a dry voice in her head, Anderson’s. _And what did we train you for?_

ICT couldn’t prepare them for what they faced, because that would always change, every mission, every enemy. All the program could give its marines was a toolbox. She had a rifle and one working leg. She had everything she needed to take out one overstuffed turian bitch.

First things first. She didn’t dare open the suit, not even to apply medi-gel. Under the circumstances the numbing agent couldn’t be nearly enough to make a dent in the pain, and the suit might be all that was holding her together. But she had to get the bone aligned and splinted or her movements would continue to be limited.

Some colonist left a hoe in reach. Her fingers closed around it. After some effort, she hauled herself to her feet, and slowly, in agony, hauled herself deeper into the wood and the cover it offered.

It didn’t take long for her to find what she needed— a pair of boulders, leaning against each other, with just enough room to slot her ankle through. She settled her foot into place. Hissing as she hooked her toes and ankle to either side of the gap. Envisioning what came next, her mind begging her to find some other way.

Shepard attempted reason. The suit would tell her if she tore the artery and started bleeding out, and then she’d have another choice. But right now, this was the only sound one available. The leg was a liability. It had to be stabilized.

She gathered her courage. Steeled herself for the absolutely necessary silence, no matter what fresh hell this brought. Then, at last, annoyed with her trepidation, she expelled a breath. “Oh, fuck, I’m really going to do this.”

And before she could give it another thought, she drove the heels of her hands into the earth, her good foot into the boulder, and gave the leg a good, hard yank.

The next moment lasted the age of the universe. When it ended, Shepard was on her back, staring up at the canopy, as a steady stream of autonomic tears slid from the corners of her eyes and into the earth. More than once, she had wondered whether pain could kill her, and now she had definitive proof that it could not, because she remained very much alive. A dubious benefit at best.

After a few more seconds, she managed to lift her head. Her leg was straight. Success. Now, for a splint.

The hoe was too long, and too unbalanced, with the metal hanging off the end. But a nearby fallen branch fit her requirements. Sitting up, she bound it to her leg by fastening her utility belt around her thigh, and using a zipline from her pouch to strap it to her calf. It ached— good god, did it ache— but it wasn’t the all-consuming fire of before. 

The hoe helped her to her feet. She could not hunt Quantana; she would have to lure her. And, unfortunately for her quarry, Shepard had done this before.

Slowly, lurching, she began to lay a trap.

* * *

Shepard perched in a tree, fading in and out of consciousness, waiting with her sniper rifle cradled in her lap. Getting up the tree was worse than the stairs. She’d never complain about pull-ups again.

But the leaves were dense enough here, and a good layer of mud concealed her hair and the brighter markings of her uniform. Her gun was scuffed already. Other marines, most not spec ops, gave her shit for intentionally damaging her gear, but she wanted the shiny off as quickly as possible. There was no glint to give her away.

The leg throbbed, a steady dull ache with no hope of cessation. She tried not to think about the reality that even if her desperate plan succeeded, she’d still be stuck here without antibiotics or real pain relief for several days, waiting on the patrol. Any transmission was unwise, but she risked it, at the location of her last breadcrumb, just before relocating here. There had been no immediate response.

Quantana would have found the first signs by now. She was too good to have missed them. All she had to do was wait, but Shepard had never excelled at patience. 

But as the day grew long and the shadows of the forest lengthened, she began to doubt. Maybe her bait was too obvious after all. Or not obvious enough, not signs turian eyes would recognize. The whole strategy was based on one dumb exercise years ago. Either way, if Quantana took her by surprise, she would simply die. Subject to an injury this debilitating, she’d played her only hand.

The trunk dug into her back. Her ass had gone completely numb, and her good leg was following suit. It occurred to her that getting out of the tree might be the harder task. But if she fell, what difference would it make? Her leg was already broken.

Her hand flew to her mouth, suppressing the sudden rush of nervous laughter. Physically, emotionally, this was her limit. Even if her trap worked, if Quantana didn’t find it soon, it wouldn’t matter.

Shepard had no use for prayer. But she cast her eyes upwards, a silent plea to the universe at large: _After all this, you owe me one small piece of luck. Just give me that, and I can do the rest._

A twig snapped.

She held her breath. Movement in the underbrush, and a flash of color, a black too cold and dark to be natural. Armor.

In absolute silence and a minimum of motion, Shepard raised her rifle and peered down the scope. She needed at least two shots, one to bring down her shield, and the second to hit. As it happened, this model of rifle would fire exactly twice before needing to cool down.

Another step. A sapling whipped upwards through the air. Quantana let out a yelp of surprise.

 _Got you._ Shepard pulled the trigger twice before the echo died from the woods. Aiming for her chest, because she couldn’t afford to miss.

A second yelp, this one a cry of pain. Shepard watched her cooling indicator with one eye and kept the other trained on the injured woman.

Quantana struggled to find her feet, something tangled about her leg. Shepard had no illusions that her simple snare would lift a grown turian, but it appeared she’d gotten lucky enough to rope her ankle. Inexcusably sloppy on Quantana’s part, but then, she’d had long day, too. It bought her precious time.

A knife flashed in the sundown light, slashing at the cord, the other half of Shepard’s zip line, put to good purpose. Just a few more bars…

Quantana surged upright, her face a mask of fury, half her markings peeled off by the heat of the fire. “You think stupid tricks will save you?”

A wheeze to her words, but not the effort she’d hoped for. Not a good hit. Shepard’s breath sped up.

“I found your trail outside the hab,” she continued, rotating slowly, trying to locate her perch. Assault rifle in her hands and ready to aim. “Did you crawl out for fun, or can’t you even walk?”

She slid behind a tree just as the cooling indicator showed ready. Shepard pursed her lips. The next hit had to be good, and it had to be now, before Quantana’s shield recharged. 

Quantana stepped out from behind the tree, turning as Shepard fired. Their eyes meeting at the same time her round struck her chest. Quantana let out an unholy snarl, raised her rifle and let off a single round--

Shepard fired again. Her eyes bulged, the air going out of her. 

The round shattered the bark just above Shepard’s head. 

Quantana sank to her knees, and then slumped onto her side. Her hand wrapped around her rifle grip, finger at the trigger, and for a wild moment Shepard thought she might actually manage it. But she lacked the strength to lift the weapon more than a few centimeters. “How? You’re hurt. You left a trail, clear as day. I found your clumsy traps.”

Shepard could see her wounds now, as she tried to rise. Two into her right lung with clean exits. That arm would be useless with her back muscles ruined. Another deep in her gut, and bleeding heavily. None of them would kill her if she got medical attention in the next twenty minutes. Maybe a few hours, if she had medi-gel for the bleeder.

Medi-gel wouldn’t give her back any strength in her core. “Do you know anything about how they train us at ICT?”

A burst of snide laughter. She wasn’t reaching for any of her pouches, or activating her suit’s first aid. They both knew it was over as soon as Shepard’s rifle cooled. “You’re not even N7. They don’t send those to investigate a simple case of radio silence.”

“I’m N5,” she corrected. “But that doesn’t matter, because this is from the N1 graduation exercise. We’re supposed to evade a team of N2s for as long as we can. N1s always get captured. It’s part of the exercise, testing how we’ll react in those circumstances.”

“I’m supposed to be impressed by how well you did in preschool?”

“You asked how I beat you.” Shepard glanced at her cooling indicator. Almost there. “I didn’t get captured at all. I was only the seventh person to do it in the history of ICT. And I did it by dividing the team, and luring them exactly where I wanted, instead of trying to evade them when they had all the advantages.”

She offered her a mocking salute from the ground. “And now you can tie up that story with a bow. Glad to be of service.”

“The Hierarchy will disavow you, you know. They can’t afford the diplomatic crisis of having spies in the Verge.” Her rifle was ready. But she had one last question. “All the colonists were dead when I got here. Poisoned water. Your work, or did you find them like that, too?”

“I infiltrated the colony. Sold them some bullshit about wanting a life free of the Hierarchy’s rigidity. But I don’t drink your water without treating it first, so I knew.” She took a ragged breath. Her hand moved over the gut wound, pressing down on it, blue blood squelching between her fingers. “But I didn’t stop it.”

“Non-interference.”

“I have my mission. You have yours.” Quantana closed her eyes. “Come down here and finish me off.”

“Sorry,” Shepard said. “But you were right. I can’t walk.”

And then she fired her gun.


End file.
